Spatiality The New Critical Idiom

Explores differing aspects of the spatial in literary studies today, such as the writer as map-maker, georg Lukács, Erich Auerbach, literature of the city and urban space, from historicism and postmodernism to postcolonialism and globalizationIntroductions to the major theorists of spatiality, David Harvey, and Fredric JamesonAnalysis of critical perspectives on spatiality, providing:An overview of the spatial turn across literary theory, including Michel Foucault, and the concepts of literary geography, Edward Soja, cartographics and geocriticism.

This clear and engaging study presents readers with a thought provoking and illuminating guide to the literature and criticism of ‘space’. Tally Jr. Spatiality has risen to become a key concept in literary and cultural studies, with critical focus on the ‘spatial turn’ presenting a new approach to the traditional literary analyses of time and history.

Robert T.

Lost Memory of Skin

A mature and masterful work of contemporary fiction from one of our most accomplished storytellers, Lost Memory of Skin unfolds in language both powerful and beautifully lyrical, show-casing Banks at his most compelling, his reckless sense of humor and intense empathy at full bore. The perfect convergence of writer and subject, lost Memory of Skin probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion—a society where isolating the offender has perhaps created a new kind of victim.

Enter the professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies. But when the professor’s past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men’s relationship shifts. Suddenly, the kid must reconsider everything he has come to believe, and choose what course of action to take when faced with a new kind of moral decision.

Long one of our most acute and insightful novelists, Russell Banks often examines the indistinct boundaries between our intentions and actions. The acclaimed author of the sweet hereafter and rule of the bone returns with a provocative new novel that illuminates the shadowed edges of contemporary American culture with startling and unforgettable resultsSuspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the center of Russell Banks’s uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration.

. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders. Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices he himself struggles to comprehend.



Melmoth: A Novel

As such superstition has it, Melmoth travels through the ages, dooming those she persuades to join her to a damnation of timeless, itinerant solitude. And then Karel disappears. That changes when her friend karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore.

In prague, at least, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts—or, refuge. Masterful…scary and smart, working as a horror story but also a philosophical inquiry into the nature of will and love. To helen it all seems the stuff of unenlightened fantasy. But, unaware, as she wanders the cobblestone streets Helen is being watched.

Perry did as much in her richly praised novel The Essex Serpent, but this is a deeper, more complex novel and more rewarding. Washington postfor centuries, searching for those whose complicity and cowardice have fed into the rapids of history’s darkest waters—and now, in Sarah Perry’s breathtaking follow-up to The Essex Serpent, the mysterious dark-robed figure has roamed the globe, it is heading in our direction.

It has been years since Helen Franklin left England.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Novel

Grand, intimate, and joyous. New york times book review“Mothers, father, sons, and daughters: read this giant-hearted novel. Maria semple, author of where’d you go, bernadettethree minutes and forty-three seconds of intensive warfare with Iraqi insurgents—caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes.

. Over the course of this day, yearn for home and mourn those missing, Billy will drink and brawl, face a heart-wrenching decision and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years. Poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a searing and powerful novel that has cemented Ben Fountain’s reputation as one of the finest writers of his generation.

Surrounded by patriots sporting flag pins on their lapels and support our troops bumper stickers, he is thrust into the company of the team’s owner and his coterie of wealthy colleagues; a born-again cheerleader; a veteran Hollywood producer; and supersized players eager for a vicarious taste of war.

New york times bestsellerNow a Major Motion Picture“Brilliantly done. On this rainy thanksgiving day, the Bravos are guests of a Dallas football team, slated to be part of the halftime show. Among the bravos is nineteen-year-old Specialist Billy Lynn. Now they’re on a media-intensive nationwide tour to reinvigorate public support for the war.

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Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen: A Novel

United in their desire to blossom into somebodies, the Wong girls fearlessly assert their intellect and sexuality, even as they come of age under the care of their dominating, cleaver-wielding grandmother from Hong Kong. An uproarious debut that lays bare the complicated generational relationships of Chinese American women.

Raucous twin sisters moonie and Mei Ling Wong are known as the “double happiness” Chinese food delivery girls. They transform themselves from food delivery girls into accomplished women, but along the way they wrestle with the influence and continuity of their Chinese heritage. Marilyn chin’s prose waxes and wanes between satire and metaphorical lyric, lurid, referencing classical Chinese tales and ghost stories that are at turns sensual, shocking, hilarious, and surreal.

Each day they load up a “crappy donkey-van” and deliver Americanized “bad” Chinese food to homes throughout their southern California neighborhood.

A Room with a View AmazonClassics Edition

Set in freewheeling Florence, England, Italy, and sober Surrey, E. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds. Revised edition: previously published as A Room with a View, this edition of A Room with a View AmazonClassics Edition includes editorial revisions.

As lucy is exposed to opportunities previously not afforded to women, her mind—and heart—must open. Before long, she’s in love with an “unsuitable” man and is faced with an impossible choice: follow her heart or be pressured into propriety. A challenge to persistent victorian ideals as well as a moving love story, A Room with a View has been celebrated for both its prescient view of women’s independence and its reminder to live an honest, authentic life.

Amazonclassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Forster’s beloved third novel follows young Lucy Honeychurch’s journey to self-discovery at a transitional moment in British society. M.

Dietland

But when a mysterious woman in colorful tights and combat boots begins following her, Plum falls down a rabbit hole into the world of Calliope House — an underground community of women who reject society’s rules — and is forced to confront the real costs of becoming “beautiful. At the same time, a guerilla group begins terrorizing a world that mistreats women, and Plum becomes entangled in a sinister plot.

The consequences are explosive. An amc original series from executive producer marti noxon,   starring joy nash and julianna marguliesa best book of the yearentertainment weekly • bustle • amazon • women’s national book Association • Kirkus Reviews • BookPage • Kobo • LitReactor    “Audacious and gutsy and heartbreaking — Dietland completely blew me away.

Jennifer WeinerThe diet revolution is here. With her job answering fan mail for a teen magazine, she is biding her time until her weight-loss surgery. Plum kettle does her best not to be noticed, because when you’re fat, to be noticed is to be judged. And it’s armed. A giddy revenge fantasy that will shake up your thinking and burrow under your skin” Entertainment Weekly, Dietland takes on the beauty industry, gender inequality, and our weight-loss obsession — with fists flying.

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Blindness Harvest Book

There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers—among them a boy with no mother, a dog of tears—through the barren streets, a girl with dark glasses, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women.

. This is a shattering work by a literary master. The boston globea new york times notable book of the Year A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses—and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit.

A stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Tropic of Orange

Hemmed in by wildfires, grandiose, and as diverse as the city itself—from an author who has received the California Book Award and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award, comic, it’s a symphony conducted from an overpass, among other literary honors. David foster wallace meets gabriel garcia Marquez” in this novel set in a dystopian Los Angeles from a National Book Award finalist Publishers Weekly.

An ingenious interpretation of social woes. Booklist starred review. Fiercely satirical .  .  . Irreverently juggling magical realism, and chicanismo, gangsters, film noir, infant organ entrepreneurs, Tropic of Orange takes place in a Los Angeles where the homeless, hip hop, and Hollywood collide on a stretch of the Harbor Freeway.

But this is a novel of dystopia and apocalypse; the mystery concerns the tragic flaws of human nature. Library journal starred review   “Brilliant .  .  . An exquisite mystery novel. Yamashita presents an intricate plot with mordant wit. The new york times book Review   “A stunner .

The Farming of Bones

It is 1937 and amabelle désir, a young haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic, has built herself a life as the servant and companion of the wife of a wealthy colonel. Already acknowledged as a classic, this harrowing story of love and survival—from one of the most important voices of her generation—is an unforgettable memorial to the victims of the Parsley Massacre and a testimony to the power of human memory.

Amabelle and sebastien are separated, and she desperately flees the tide of violence for a Haiti she barely remembers. But amabelle's  world collapses when a wave of genocidal violence, driven by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, leads to the slaughter of Haitian workers. She and sebastien, a cane worker, are deeply in love and plan to marry.

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Topophrenia: Place, Narrative, and the Spatial Imagination The Spatial Humanities

The book provides an introduction to spatial literary studies, literary cartography, exploring in detail the theory and practice of geocriticism, and the spatial humanities more generally. Tally considers the tension between the objective ordering of a space and the subjective ways in which narrative worlds are constructed.

The spatial anxiety of disorientation and the need to know one's location, even if only subconsciously, is a deeply felt and shared human experience. What is our place in the world, and mapping, and how do we inhabit, history, and represent this place to others? Topophrenia gathers essays by Robert Tally that explore the relationship between space, understand, and literary criticism, on the one hand, place, and theory on the other.

Narrative maps present a way of understanding that seems realistic but is completely figurative. So how can these maps be used to not only understand the real world but also to put up an alternative vision of what that world might otherwise be? From Tolkien to Cervantes, represent, Topophrenia provides a clear and compelling explanation of how geocriticism, the spatial humanities, Borges to More, and literary cartography help us to narrate, and understand our place in a constantly changing world.

Building on yi fu tuan's "topophilia" or love of place, anxiety, Tally instead considers the notion of "topophrenia" as a simultaneous sense of place-consciousness coupled with a feeling of disorder, and "dis-ease. He argues that no effective geography could be complete without also incorporating an awareness of the lonely, loathsome, or frightening spaces that condition our understanding of that space.

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